Restitution (The Alpha Drive Book 3)

by Kristen Martin

  He’d found Dr. Matheson’s experience in biogenetic engineering to be especially interesting, and when he’d presented the second phase of Operation Revive to him, the doctor had been more than willing to participate.

  “All right, let’s get to work,” Byron said, finishing one of his many pep talks. As of late, it’d become increasingly difficult to keep the team motivated, not to mention the results for phase two were beginning to look just as dismal as phase one—but he wouldn’t allow that to dull his spirit. There was no doubt in his mind that they would figure out how to imitate sanaré’s properties, even if it took double the manpower to do so.

  “Dr. Matheson, please stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed,” Byron said with a polite wave of his hand. “I appreciate your efforts during these trying times, and I look forward to your future reports.” He waited for the last scientist to leave before shutting the door to his office. As he walked back around the desk, he stole a glance at Matheson. Beads of sweat formed along the doctor’s forehead.

  Ignoring it, Byron seated himself, then leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, chin in hand. “I must say, I’m quite disappointed with our progress thus far.”

  Dr. Matheson shifted in his seat, but remained quiet.

  Byron studied his face for a moment, then sat back in his chair. “What do you need from me? How can I help speed up our progress?”

  Matheson removed his wire-rimmed glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. His eyes were red and watery from lack of sleep. “There’s really nothing you can do,” he mumbled, the sentence barely audible.

  Byron bit the inside of his cheek as he formulated his response. “Do you understand what’s at stake here?”

  Dr. Matheson nodded his head. “I do.”

  “That’s interesting, because it sure doesn’t seem like it,” Byron countered as he stood up from his chair. “As you know, my daughter is on a wild goose-chase in search of the ingredients to formulate sanaré.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Byron pressed his mouth into a harsh line. “I have no doubt that she’ll discover the formulation. In the meantime, I’ve asked you to develop a way to imitate large quantities of the liquid formulation without the need to obtain the original ingredients, or even the formulation for that matter.” His gaze landed on the doctor’s receding hairline as he cracked his knuckles. “And the best you’ve been able to come up with is duplicating milligram amounts?”

  Matheson finished cleaning his glasses with his lab coat before returning them to his face. “That is correct.”

  Byron clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Can you see where my frustration lies?”

  The doctor was silent for a moment before slowly standing from his chair. “Yes, I understand what’s at stake here. Ever since the destruction of Dormance, the economy has been sub-par at best, what with all the re-emerging civilians. There aren’t enough jobs due primarily to the fact that teleportation has made the entire transportation industry obsolete.” He paused to take a breath. “Now that ‘the grey’ is spreading, not only in North America, but also on a global scale, the opportunity to mass produce and distribute the one and only cure provides huge potential monetary benefits, as well as the obvious health benefits.” He fluffed his lab coat before continuing. “So, yes Commander, I understand what’s at stake.”

  Byron opened his mouth to interject, but Matheson kept going.

  “I understand that this could be our livelihood. But with all due respect, sir, you can’t just snap your fingers and expect me to have it all figured out, especially in such a short amount of time. I am willing to help, as I said before, but I’m asking that you have a little more patience. And a little more faith.”

  Byron took a step back, shocked at the scientist’s rational response. It was a common stereotype that scientists were logically-wired and couldn’t always see the “big picture”. As much as he hated to admit it, he’d definitely pegged Dr. Matheson as a stereotypical lab geek, but he was happy to learn that the doctor did get the big picture—and that he seemed willing to help Byron get there.

  Feeling tongue-tied, all Byron could manage to say was, “Good.”

  Matheson gave a quick nod of his head, then turned to leave the room.

  Byron cleared his throat. “Doctor?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, his hand on the doorknob.

  “Don’t let me down.”

  Dr. Matheson smirked. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  29

  Back in Arizona, Emery stood over the kitchen table with all the ingredients splayed out in the shape of a four-leaf clover, like the drawing in the journal. They were missing just one ingredient. She and Torin had spend the last hours poring over the journals, but nothing had jumped out at either of them. Riley was on Alexis-duty, and Byron had taken the fourth journal outdoors, claiming that fresh air was just what he needed to awaken his senses. She was starting to think that maybe he was onto something.

  “Find anything?” Torin asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope, nothing. This is so frustrating!” She closed the journal and chucked it across the table, then sat down, leaning back into the chair.

  “I know,” he agreed. “Maybe we’re wrong about the four-leaf clover. Maybe there really are only three ingredients.”

  “Maybe. I don’t even know what would be considered a spiritual ingredient anyways.”

  “Holy water?” he joked with a sideways smile.

  “Har-har. Very funny.” She ran a hand through her hair, her crimson locks catching the sun’s reflection in the window. “I’m going to go check on my dad, see if he’s found anything.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to go through this one more time.”

  The look of determination on his face reminded her of their many trials and tribulations during Novak’s tyranny. What an easier time that had been. Did that thought really just cross my mind? She grimaced. “Have fun with that.”

  She slid out of the chair and opened the patio door, eyeing her father at the far end of the backyard. She figured he’d be by the firepit, seeing as the weather was chillier than expected, but instead, he stood in the gravel near the holofence.

  “Hey!” she shouted in order to get his attention.

  Byron turned, journal in hand. His face lit up as soon as he saw her. “Hey, kid. How’s it going?”

  She stepped off the patio deck onto the gravel and meandered over to him. “Unfortunately, not so good. We can’t find anything that might be considered a spiritual ingredient.” She kicked some of the rocks surrounding her feet and dug her toe into the dirt underneath. “What about you?”

  He sighed. “To be honest, I’m not having much luck either. It’s a shame, really. It makes me wonder if I really even knew your mother at all.”

  She put a hand on her father’s shoulder. She knew how much he loved riddles and figuring out puzzles. Heck, he was the one who’d taught her half the riddles she knew. If it hadn’t been for him, she probably would have been eaten alive by that manticore back in Dormance.

  Ah, yes. The good ol’ days.

  “You knew mom, just like I knew mom. Maybe she didn’t record the last ingredient in her journals. Maybe it was something she was still working on. You know, like a work-in-progress,” she suggested.

  He shook his head. “You might be right. But I still feel like I should be able to figure it out.”

  “Someway, somehow, we’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  He gave her a half smile, then shifted his gaze back to the journal. “I’m going to go through this one last time, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.”

  She nodded, leaving him to it, then turned to head back inside. The sun lit up the patio deck as it emerged from behind dark grey clouds. She smiled as she gazed upward, Mason’s face floating across her mind. It was the first time in a while he’d made an appearance in her thoughts.

  Help me, M
ason. Where do we go from here?

  She stood still for a moment, unmoving, until a large cloud appeared and covered the remaining sunshine. She sighed, feeling silly for talking to nothing—to no one.

  She shut the door behind her, noticing that Torin was still sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over the same journal, eyes flitting across the page. The rattling of the blinds as the door closed caught his attention. “Please tell me your dad had good news.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh as she sat back down at the table. “I wish I could say that, but no. We’re all stuck.” She noticed that he now held a pen with one hand, and with the other, seemed to be holding a spot in the journal. She leaned over the table to get a closer look, and a small sketch of something indiscernible came into view.

  “Are you drawing in my mom’s journal?”

  He froze. The pen dropped from his fingertips. He raised both hands in the air, the journal flipping shut. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” he apologized. “I just had an idea and—”

  “—decided to deface my mother’s work?” she pressed. “Seriously, Torin? I swear, sometimes you don’t think at all.” She slammed her hand down on the journal and slid it across the table.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he lowered his gaze.

  She drummed her fingers atop the worn leather, taking slow, deep inhales to calm herself down. It took a few moments, but eventually, her heart rate normalized and her body temperature lowered. She waited until she felt the color leave her cheeks, then eyed her friend, his gaze still pointed toward the floor. “Hey,” she said as she reached over to put her hand on his. He flinched slightly, but didn’t remove his hand. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled like that. I’m just really sensitive to—” she paused, unable to find the right words—“all of this.”

  He lifted his gaze and nodded. “I understand.”

  Silence lingered between them.

  She quickly shifted her thoughts back to the last question he’d asked before her unfortunate outburst. “So, you were asking if my dad had good news.”

  He nodded. “You said he didn’t.”

  “Right. That hasn’t changed.”

  He gave her a small smile.

  There he is.

  “So what do we do now?”

  She locked her gaze on the closed journal lying in front of her. “I think we should start to formulate.”

  “Even without the fourth ingredient?”

  “Who knows if there even is a fourth ingredient? The other ones were so easy to find, and now this last one suddenly seems impossible? It doesn’t make sense.” She shrugged her shoulders, then stood up from the table. “The grey isn’t getting any better, so we may as well start formulating with what we’ve got. If we need to add something in later, then I suppose we’ll figure it out at that time.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s going to work.”

  She tilted her head, giving him a knowing look. “Do you have any better ideas?”

  “No, I suppose not.” His shoulders slumped in defeat. After a moment of silence, he finally caved. “Okay, fine. You win. Back to Chicago then?”

  Emery clapped her hands together and nodded. “Back to Chicago.”

  + +

  Emery watched attentively as Torin divvied up the ingredients on his coffee table. Although her mom’s handwriting resembled something close to chicken scratch, it seemed like they had the appropriate portions of each.

  Here’s hoping.

  “Okay, based on her recordings for the viscosity and pH levels of sanaré,” he said, reviewing the journal once more, “we should use one ounce of zagume, half an ounce of achioshells, and about five milliliters of blacoka.”

  She double-checked the numbers, knowing full well that Torin didn’t make mistakes when it came to math. She nodded her head in confirmation. “How are we going to get five milliliters of blacoka?” She lifted up one of the incense-like sticks. “It’s not exactly a liquid.”

  “Our best bet is to crush it to make it more like a spice or an herb-like consistency.”

  “I really hope this works,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, me too,” he said as he began crushing the blacoka. “My gut’s still telling me that there’s a fourth ingredient, though.”

  She sighed. “I know, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We should try this first.”

  She watched as he left the table and started up the ARC 4000, one of the pieces of equipment they’d taken from Sandra’s lab. It was an older machine and quite small, no more than a foot in height that held a glass beaker in the center of a field of electrical currents. A knob at the bottom controlled the voltage, and it appeared there was also an emergency shut-off switch.

  In case things get out of hand? That’s worrisome.

  “Okay, here goes.”

  She leaned forward and focused her full attention as he first poured the zagume into the beaker, followed by the achioshells, then the crushed up blacoka. She reread her mother’s entry aloud, making sure he’d set the voltage to the correct setting. The currents began to buzz as the ingredients lifted from the base of the beaker, floating in midair like those in a crystal ball. The zagume molded with the achioshell liquid to create a sort of bronzed mocha color. The blacoka particles were then immersed into the liquid, shifting the color to a darker shade of orange. The whole process took all of three minutes. She continued to watch intently as the ARC 4000 whined, signaling it was shutting down. The electrical currents disappeared from sight.

  Torin slipped on a glove and carefully pulled the beaker from the machine. He swirled the liquid around in the glass, bringing it to eye level so they could both see it more clearly. “So, what do you think? Does it look like sanaré?”

  “Kind of,” she said as she examined the liquid more closely. “But I’m pretty sure sanaré was a vibrant orange color. This is like a burnt orange. Almost brown.”

  His shoulders sagged as he set the beaker down on the table. “It’s probably not right then, and that means there’s most likely a fourth ingredient.”

  “There’s really only one way to find out if it works. We need to test it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What? How? It’s not like we have mice with ‘the grey’ or any other living thing that survived Dormance.”

  She gave him a poignant look, and could immediately tell he’d caught on to her train of thought.

  His mouth opened in horror. “No. Absolutely not,” he argued, shaking his head violently. “We’re not testing it on you!”

  “We have to,” she pleaded. “We both knew this was coming. It’s the only way we can find out whether or not it works.”

  “But what if we were wrong? What if it hurts you? Or makes your condition worse?” His eyes grew wide. “Or kills you?”

  “Well, that’s just a risk I’m willing to take.” She looked him dead in the eye. “Torin, this could be it. In your hands, you could be holding the one thing that can heal the entire world.” She paused. “But in order to know, we have to test it.” She gazed down at the beaker with determined eyes. “So, load up a syringe.”

  He opened his mouth in protest, but she shot him a harsh look. He retreated to his desk where he pulled out a case of syringes. “Are you sure about this? I mean, really sure?”

  “No,” she admitted, “but do we really have a choice?”

  “Let me at least grab a mouse or plant or something from outside, just to make sure it doesn’t have any negative side effects.”

  “No.” She shook her head as she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. “We don’t have time to find a nonhuman test subject and analyze data and blah, blah, blah. We need a human subject, and that human subject is me.” She took a deep breath. “Just do it, please, before I change my mind.”

  He studied her face for a moment. “Fine,” he said as he removed the beaker from the coffee table, then stuck the syringe into the liquid. In the blink of an eye, it wa
s full, the needle dripping burnt orange.

  “Ready?”

  She closed her eyes. “Ready.” Taking a deep breath, she tried not to wince as the needle pierced her skin, the liquid oozing into her bloodstream. As the pressure released, she opened her eyes to find him wrapping a bandage around her elbow.

  “Do you feel okay?”

  She accidentally let out a crazed laugh, which would probably make him think something had gone extremely wrong. “Seriously? You injected it less than two seconds ago.”

  He eyed her suspiciously, as if she were a criminal who’d just been released from death row on a technicality. “Just tell me if you start to feel weird, okay?”

  They sat there for the next ten minutes, still as statues, his eyes trained on her like a puppy who hadn’t been housebroken yet.

  “You don’t have to stare at me,” she chided.

  His cheeks turned red. “Sorry. I’m just nervous, that’s all.” He cast his eyes downward, then looked up abruptly with wide eyes and a huge smile. “Your hands!”

  “Huh?” She dropped her gaze to see what he was so excited about. There they were. Her olive-colored hands.

  “Wait, does this mean we did it? We actually did it?”

  “It’s working, Em. The grey . . . it’s gone!” He reached out to hold her hands in his, and, much to her surprise, she let him. His skin was cool to the touch and slightly calloused. She ran her fingers through his, but her feelings of elation quickly began to fade.

  Something’s not right. It was almost too easy.

  She gazed at Torin, whose face was glowing with pride. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There could be side effects . . .”

  “I agree. I should probably keep you under observation for the next couple of days, just to make sure it’s working properly.” He scratched his head. “It might be a good idea for you to keep a journal of your own so you can document how you’re feeling.”

  “That idea’s not half bad.” She smirked. “Well, what do we do now?”

  He looked down at the empty beaker and syringe, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Relax?”